Coolermaster Hyper Z600 CPU Cooler Review

Introduction

With the ever-increasing amount of cores being added to processors these days, the CPU temperature is a rising factor. To deal with this, the common route for most enthusiasts is a bigger and better cooler. However with larger heat-sinks, noisier fans are often prominent. Fortunately this is where Coolermaster have found a gap in the market and invented the ‘Hyper Z600’, a fully passive cooler for even the latest of processing units.

Features

Unique “X” design creates lower back pressure to make air pass through heat-sink quickly and guide more air pass through the heat-sink

Mirror-coated copper base and 6 heat pipes ensure 100% contact with the processor to maximize the heat conduction. It could draw heat from CPU to the heat pipes immediately

Optimum fin space allows air pass through heat-sink quickly

Specifications

The Package

The Z600 arrives in a solid cuboid-shaped box. Aesthetically the packaging goes by a very clean style – typical of Coolermaster’s designers – hence suggesting a very professional product.

Upon the front of the box is little detail. Simply the company logo and product name. A cross design is also evident which later reveals is a representation of the top of the cooler.

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The rear and sides are much more informative with the features, specifications and gallery images of the Z600 being shown. According to the sides, the Hyper can be used with dual fans, with one fan or without any fans at all (completely passive). This aids in this product not only being favourable for silence enthusiasts, but also users needing superior CPU cooling.

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Included along with the heat-sink is a wide variety of accessories:

Detailed multilingual user manual

Warranty information leaflet

Various mounting clips and brackets for an assortment of CPU’s

Screws which are needed for installation

Small syringe of Coolermaster’s own thermal paste

Four mounting brackets enabling you to mount up to two 120mm fans

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Coolermaster Hyper Z600

The Z600 resembles a tower format design, commonly used on many heat-sinks in today’s market. It has six (6mm) copper nickel plated heat-pipes, which flow up from the copper base through to all the many aluminium fins which occupy the heat-sink. All this adds to the weight considerably meaning the total weight is a whopping 1045g.

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Occupying the top of the heat-sink is a large ‘x-shape’ aluminium Coolermaster emblem; this hides the raw ends of the copper heat-pipes to give it more of an aesthetically pleasing look.

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With the inclusion of the black plastic brackets, a fan – or even two – can be mounted vertically on the heat-sink’s fins resulting in a non-passive form of this product. This will mean that cool air is drawn from the front of the cooler and hot air is exited from the rear. Fortunately this yields it to be ideal for more than just the silent enthusiast but for the gamer or overclocker too.

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In terms of size the Z600 measures 127.8mm across and stands a whopping 160mm in height. This unfortunately makes it very fiddly when working with connections such as the 4-pin power plug which annoyingly is situated around the CPU area on most motherboards.

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On arrival, a plastic sticker protects the base from any greasy fingerprints or debris which could infer the maximum performance of the cooler.

With the sticker removed, the nickel plated copper base appears not to be very shiny at all and actually quite blurry. I suspect this is due to a poor nickel plated finish. If Coolermaster left the base just as copper and had polished it up well, they could’ve achieved a much shinier and flatter surface aiding better thermal conductivity hence performance.

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Testing

Test Setup

Processor

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 @ 3GHZ

Motherboard

ASUS P5K Premium

RAM

Geil Black Dragon (2x 1GB) DDR2 6400

Graphics Card

Zotac 9600GT

HDD

Western Digital SE16 500GB

OS

Windows Vista Home Premium SP1

Processor

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 @ 3.6GHZ

Motherboard

ASUS P5K Premium

To test CPU Coolers we simply boot the PC up into Windows Vista and measure temperatures under idle and load states. The temperature is recorded from the CPU’s own diode using SpeedFan.

For idle testing, we leave the PC doing nothing for half an hour and take 3 temperature readings at 10 second intervals after 30mins. We then use the average score from these as the result.

When testing at load temperatures, we use a similar method but load both cores of our CPU right to 100% by loading two processes of ‘CPU Burn-In’.

Ambient (testing environment) temperature was 21 degrees Celsius.

We’ll be comparing the Coolermaster Hyper Z600 to the stock Intel Cooler (copper base model). Arctic Silver 5 is the thermal paste which will be used when testing both of the coolers.

The processor will be tested at stock clock.

Results

*Measured in Degrees Celsius

Coolermaster Hyper Z600
(Passive)

Stock Intel

(Copper Base Version)

Idle

42

34

Load

63

50

Coolermaster Hyper Z600

(With one 120mm Fan)

Stock Intel

(Copper Base Version)

Idle

26

34

Load

48

50

When used as a passive cooler, the Z600 would be fine for day to day tasks. However overclocking and gaming aren’t options being the cooler is used like this. With a 120mm fan installed though, it performs much better and makes the Hyper Z600 worthwhile. If some hardcore overclocking or intense gaming was in play, dual 120mm fans could be installed to drop the temperatures even more.

Noise

When passive the cooler is obviously silent. When a 120mm fan is installed, slight turbulence can be heard which is the result of the tightly compacted aluminium fins.

Conclusion

I do like the idea of having a fully passive cooler but as we witnessed from the temperatures, it isn’t really an option for most users unless you live in the Antarctic or have a lowly-specified system.

The aesthetics and quality of the Z600 is truly outstanding making it seem that your purchase is money well spent. It’s just a shame the ‘out-of-the-box’ performance contrasts badly with this.

If you were seriously considering this product, I’d fully recommend using at least one 120mm fan in conjunction with it – better being safe than sorry. With just one fan, the steep slope in performance makes the Z600 a cracking good CPU Cooler.